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Jan 10 Legitimate Artists Can Work in Cubicles

I was four years old when the tour of Peter Pan came through Toronto. I sat in one of those theatre booster seats in my fanciest dress and travelled from the Darling home to Neverland, and back again.

When the lights came back up, I turned to my mom and asked, “Is it over already?” She laughed, afraid two hours was too long for a fidgety little girl. Apparently she was wrong.

That was just the start of my musical theatre mania. I listened to Broadway cast recordings on repeat, I convinced my parents to take me to any musical theatre production within driving distance. I even took musical theatre lessons, where I always played characters like “nun #2” or “munchkin."

Around this time, my fourth grade teacher had us browse through career books to help us figure out what we wanted to be when we grew up. Each page was dedicated to a career: Teacher, Lawyer, Firefighter, Broadway Actor.

Wait. Broadway Actor? This was a career? In all my obsessing, it never occurred to me that these actors were performing as their job.

On some level, I knew it would never be my job—I only needed to be cast as “orphan #3” so many times to know I was better in the audience than on the stage. But my world was suddenly opened up to creative arts as a career. People had jobs like “actor”, “painter” and “writer.” It wasn’t just a hobby.

Yet over time, this evolved into thinking that creative arts are only legitimate if they are your career, if it’s what sustains you. Actors were only real actors if they were on a Broadway stage. Writers were only real writers if they were on The New York Times Best Sellers list. For those of us who lean to the creative side, that’s the dream.

Until it’s our career, the creativity is just a hobby. It’s just a side project, something we do just for fun. Because how can you call yourself a painter when your job is an administrative assistant? How can you be a real singer when you spend 40 hours a week in a cubicle?

But honestly? I think we romanticize the notion of our art being our career. I don’t think it’s as easy or fulfilling as the famous artists make it appear.

I want you to know that being a legitimate artist and holding a day job are not mutually exclusive. You can do both. At the same time.

I spend my days as a Communications professional in the healthcare field. I create communication strategy, I maintain websites and manage social media, and I write. But it’s not the kind of writing that fuels me. It’s the kind of writing that pays my bills.

So I’ve made time for the kind of writing that fuels me. In doing so, I’ve discovered that I am a creative writer simply because I’ve made the decision to pursue writing with curiosity and passion.

And in this process, I’ve learned a few secrets of balancing a creative passion and a day job: play, persistence, priorities and patterns.

Let your creativity play.

When you’re not relying on your next painting or story to pay for the roof over your head, the pressure is off. You can take a long time, you can make mistakes, you can try something completely new and see if it works. And if it doesn’t? Not a big deal. Play with your creativity and see what you can do when the stakes are low.

Your job and your art are put in perspective.

The world will keep turning if you filed the wrong paperwork or if the budget doesn’t balance perfectly. It will also keep turning if you don’t get the part you auditioned for or if the magazine rejected your article. The world is so much bigger than your day job or your art – having both things in your life is a good reminder of that.

You will prioritize what’s important.

I know. You’re busy. How can I expect you to have time to make an income and pursue a creative passion? I’ll let you in on a secret. There’s no such thing as “having time”, but there is such a thing as “making time”. If you want something bad enough, you’ll make time for it. You might have to get creative – wake up early, say no to things that you’d rather say yes to – but you’ll figure it out.

Expect life’s patterns.

There are going to be periods of work life that are busy and take up more energy than normal. In my experience during those periods of time, even when I do get myself up at 5:00 to write, I spend that time staring a blank document on the computer screen. So I cut myself some slack and focus more energy on my day job for that period of time. Once things get back to normal, I’m back to my creative routine.

Play, perspective, priorities and patterns. These are the key ingredients to being a legitimate artist while also holding a day job.

And I don’t say any of this to shame the struggling artists – those that are scrimping and sacrificing to make a living off of your art. If this feels right to you, if you find peace in this lifestyle, then I think you’re amazing and please let me know how I can support you.

But if you are doubting your credibility as a legitimate artist because you also have a day job, stop. That’s a lie. And if you are hesitant to take a job at that coffee shop because it means you’ve failed, stop. That’s also a lie.

You live in a world where you get to make decisions about your time and how you use it. Don’t let anyone, yourself included, tell you otherwise.

And while I’ll continue to admire those that stand on Broadway stages or live for weeks at a time at the top of The New York Times Best Seller list, I’m going to be okay to know I might not ever get there. And I’m going to keep creating anyway.

It’s discouraging when you work something up in your head for so long and nothing comes of it; the moment I put something in there, I can’t let it go for the life of me. And it’s even more discouraging when you realize that what you want may not exactly be what you need. But John Steinbeck once wrote to his sons: “I have discovered that there are other rivers. A great many never come to know that there are other rivers.” I over-analyze literature like I over-analyze everything else, but what I took from this is that sometimes, we try to cling so hard onto what we know, simply because it’s what we know. But you have to allow your dreams to change so constantly because you are changing so constantly. There are other rivers, and other cities, and other places to grow in. And often, they are the ones you would never expect.

It’s been a hell of a year, but in the very ordinary, nothing-too-tragic-has-occurred sense. You know, the kind of hell that has nothing to do with a death or an incurable illness or a divorce or an addiction, none of that. In fact, if you were to peer into the window of my life from the sidewalk a yard away, it would look to you like it’s been quite a rich year from last summer to the new one approaching us: adventures all around the country and even the world, a new job, a new house with a kitchen so beautiful it should be photographed and framed, a new kitten, by golly! So much new-ness. All good. Objectively, that is.

But I’ve been a mess through it all, a big ‘ole blumbering not-pretty-to-look-at, please-avert-your-eyes mess.

The moment has arrived. After months of near neuroses, you’ve narrowed down your options and you’re ready to submit your completed graduate school application(s). To anyone who has not reached this point, the idea of actually being finished with your GRE and having gathered everything to submit an application may seem too good to be true. It also might seem downright unrealistic. Our undergrad applications were essentially a joke, seeing as how Jesus Christ Himself gifted us with websites like Common App that made submitting applications into the distant memory it is today. However, forget everything you know about applying to college. Take those sweet, sweet memories of meeting with your high school guidance counselor out of that back slot in your brain and erase the files. You’re on your own now, friend.

Have you ever had those moments when your thoughts unexpectedly go from a slow, Sunday-driver pace to an absurd, Fast and Furious velocity? This, of course, often happens to me just as I’m peacefully drifting off to sleep.

The most recent time my mind-engine revved was a couple days ago on International Women’s Day, which, to my chagrin, I just found out was a thing. The Google Doodle for the occasion showed women of various cultures and backgrounds finishing the sentence “One day I will…” with their career and life ambitions, and it made me feel inspired and proud, yet simultaneously panicked. After watching the Doodle, the souped-up hot rod in my brain—a Lamborghini, obvi—skipped the first several gears and squealed out of the driveway.

What is my ‘one day I will’ dream? Why don’t I know all of these languages? What if I’ve missed an opportunity—or several— to really pursue my dreams? Am I living up to my potential as a human and a woman? Am I even adulting/womaning correctly?!

On a warm July evening in Rome, after a long day on foot, Kristen and I shared dinner and dessert in one of the quieter corners of the city. Outside of the Italian cafe, at a little two-person table, we rehashed once again all of our wonders, fears and hopes for the years ahead while strangers filtered through unnoticed. Three hours into our conversation, in between sips of my lukewarm cappuccino, I blithely expressed a simple yet powerful intention that would ultimately change the course of my life.

About a month ago, I was driving to downtown Franklin, Tennessee with a friend and spilling my fearful, panicking guts from the passenger’s seat. I had just received news that I would not be getting a job I had spent three interviews preparing to accept. I was rundown and disappointed, feeling lost in the jungle of post-graduation.

“You should just drive across the country,” she said lightheartedly, and laughter ensued. Drive across the country, what an absurd idea. But then the joke got taken one step too far and all of a sudden we were plotting about who would pay my rent for a month and where I could stop to stay the night in Oklahoma and Arizona and California. Suddenly, I was calling my parents and asking if I would still be allowed to come home for Christmas if I made a rather (arguably) reckless decision and drove my tired, thirteen-year-old car across the country. (It took some negotiation but I am, indeed, still allowed to come home.) We sat in a coffee shop for an hour and hammered out the plan and concluded that there really wouldn’t be one, that sometimes you have to take a leap, whether or not it looks like a promising landing, and whether or not people are going to speculate about where your mind might have run off to.

I’ve cried more in the past few months than I probably ever have in my entire life, throughout this huge blur of confusion and aimless direction and anxiety. And although I was extremely fortunate to find a job soon after we graduated, it was far from what I wanted to be doing in the long run. It was a temp position, and that’s all I ever wanted it to be: temporary.

I have this tendency to be self-doubtful, to over-analyze every little thing to every little core, pick it apart, over-analyze it some more. And I have no idea why. So from when I first sat down at my desk up until now, I constantly apologized for all of the countless (countless…) mistakes I made, the appointments that I booked incorrectly, the money I added wrong; the list goes on.

What it boils down to essentially is this pressure to prove myself. But prove what? I’m not even totally sure. This pressure is entirely self-created; I’m lucky to have family and friends who support and believe in me despite my wishy-washiness. Sometimes I feel like they trust me too much. I realize this is a good problem to have.

Since graduating, I’ve taken some time figuring out which direction to go. I’ve done the nannying thing, then the traveling thing and now the retail thing. None of which are relevant to my major (which I’ve learned is in itself, irrelevant), but I can also say with 1000% confidence that my interest no longer even lies in that field. I’ve criticized myself every step of the way, but it is comforting to know just how many people are in that same boat.

Lindsay is slowly coming to terms with the fact that she’s no longer a recent graduate, having received a degree in Communication Technology from the University of Toronto in 2007. She lives in suburbs of Toronto and works as a Senior Communication Advisor in the healthcare field. Lindsay loves connections and community and is happiest in the audience of a Broadway show. Most of the funny things she says were first said by a Gilmore Girl. Lindsay tries to choose butterflies and writes about it on her blog. You can also follow her random thoughts and Broadway nerdom on Twitter @LindsATurner.

Lindsay is slowly coming to terms with the fact that she’s no longer a recent graduate, having received a degree in Communication Technology from the University of Toronto in 2007. She lives in suburbs of Toronto and works as a Senior Communication Advisor in the healthcare field. Lindsay loves connections and community and is happiest in the audience of a Broadway show. Most of the funny things she says were first said by a Gilmore Girl. Lindsay tries to choose butterflies and writes about it on her blog. You can also follow her random thoughts and Broadway nerdom on Twitter @LindsATurner.

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